GNED1201 Notes: Dance in Ancient Greece: Context for the Bakkhai

Ancient Greece

Largely known from the Athenian point of view.
Timeline:
- Begins with the end of the Greco-Persian Wars (492-490 BCE and 480-479 BCE).
- Formation of the Delian League (under disparate Athenian hegemony).
- End of the Golden Age begins with the Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE and coincides with its end in 404 BCE.
Included many reforms in politics, economics, culture, and the military.
Featured (from the Athenian point of view):
- Political dominance (Greek Mainland and Asia Minor).
- Economic growth (for all classes).
- Cultural development (especially in theatre).
Pericles (b. 495 BCE - d. 429 BCE):
- Athenian statesman, general, and orator.
- Often noted and critiqued as being a populist.

Context of the Theatre

The theatre is often regarded as having reached its peak during the Golden Age of Athens.
In consideration of its:
- Architecture.
- Plays performed there.
- How it was civically and financially sustained.
- Professionalization of the space and field.
Large, permanent (outdoor) theatres were also established that held tens of thousands of spectators.
Performances:
- Long (up to eight hours).
- Competitive (and so, too, was the financing).
- Consisted of no more than three actors (who wore character masks).
- Included a chorus of up to 50.
Playwrights from this time:
- Euripides.
- Aeschylus.
- Sophocles.
- Aristophanes.

Other Contexts of Interest

Education:
- In addition to reading, writing, and mathematics, education included music and a great deal of physical education in athletics.
Gender:
- Women not permitted to perform in the theatre.
- Free women’s role was largely the household and rearing children.
- Women could, however, legally divorce and receive financial compensation.
- Gender segregation waxed and waned in many cases but largely women’s political, cultural, sexual, religious, and financial lives were dominated by male politics and desires and this was expressed through dance.
Festivals: many festivals, including Dionysia.
Cults: various cults, such as that of Dionysus, celebrated and venerated through dance.

Philosophy of Dance in Ancient Greece

Athenian Philosopher Plato (c. 428 BCE to 328 BCE) classified movement into two categories: noble dance and ignoble dance.
- Noble Dance - movement of beautiful bodies
- Ignoble Dance - distorted movement
To Plato, to perform a noble dance, it was important to have a deep understanding of:
- Phora - carriage of the body
- Schema - form and shape of gestures
- Deixis - essence of human character
Plato considers those who cannot dance as uneducated and unrefined, whereas an accomplished dancer is the epitome of a cultured citizen.
Dance, to Plato, was considered an embodiment of the cosmos, the same as the structure of the polis (city).
He further attested to the utility of dance (and not just aesthetic and religious properties), such as its use in war.
This is an early attestation to the concept of aesthetics in dance and that there existed a concept of dancing well and dancing poorly as well as a distinction between professional and amateur.
From Plato’s Laws (c. 366 - 367 BC)

Context of Dance

Dance was not just done but something to be achieved.
Plato considered those who could not dance as uneducated and unrefined, whereas an accomplished dancer is the epitome of a cultured person.
Different types of dance that were attested to:
- Military Dances
- War Dances
- Animal Dances
- Celebratory Dances
- Ritual Dances (i.e., funerary rites)
- Religious Dances
- Sacred Dances
This tells us two things:
- Dance served a function outside of just performance, socialization, and religion.
- The body was something to be constructed and shaped through training and ideology. That is, ideological ideas were imposed on and expressed through the body.

More Context of Dance

Distinction between professional and amateur dancers - professional dancers were trained and paid.
Chori largely responsible for singing and dancing and functioned as the program guide for the audience.
With the exception of the Bakkhai, the chorus was not actually part of the story.
There is also a relationship between the size of venue, the chorus, and codified movement.

More Context of Dance

For now, it is sufficient for us to realize that the dancing body in ancient Greece was not neglected and was seen as more than just expressive movement.
The dancing body was a body that had power imposed upon it and through that, expressed power, physically and ideologically.

Cult of Dionysus

In short, a ritual in honour of Dionysus and involved wine (its life-cycle and its use as an intoxicant), singing, dancing, and sacrifices.
Central to the worship of Dionysus was the lowering of the threshold of what was and what was not acceptable.
Bakkhai could be a narrative on the domestication of the Dionysian Rites…

Euripides

Athenian writer who was a former (trained) dancer and torch-bearer for the rites of Zeus and a tragicomedy writer (very rare as tragedy and comedy were very separate genres) - won five competitions (one posthumously).
He was concerned with the underrepresented, e.g., women, slaves, and is considered a “proto- feminist” writer though we still have to frame this within the context of him being a Greek man.
He opted to depict emotional realism, i.e., “the human condition”.
There is some argument that while he depicted gods, worship, and the dangers of straying, he was agnostic and somewhat cynical of religion and perhaps this permeated his work.
To note, he was a contentious playwright in his time - why?

Bakkhai

Bakkhai is called one of “the most Asiatic of all the Attic dramas [where] Dionysus is explicitly connected with his Asian origins and with the strangely threatening excesses of Oriental mysteries.”1
That is, the values of the Occident (the west) are worn away by the excesses of the Orient (the east), which are thought to be opposite to "normal values.”
This is one of the many dualisms within Bakkhai as seen from the western perspective.

Bakkhai Interpretations

There are many, many interpretations of the Bakkhai that intersect and diverge from each other.
However, these are the ones pertinent to us:
- Commentary on the Orient versus the Occident
- Commentary on the extremes of Form and Freedom, especially among age and gender
- Aetiology of the worship of Dionysus

Reading Assignment

For May 13, 2025, there is an optional reading of Orientalism by Edward Said that will help you better understand the day’s lecture.
For May 13, 2025, there is a required reading of the Bakkhai by Euripides.
Please read pages 44 to 98 of the Bakkhai by Euripides (trans. R. Gibbons).
This may seem like a lot of text, but it is a play and ought to take about 1.50 hours to 2.00 hours to complete.
To avoid the login error, please open the link below in a new page or copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?pq-origsite=primo&docID=430349
As there are some terms and places you may not be familiar with, here is a Mini Dictionary I’ve made that you can access via your @mtroyal.ca account.

For the Quiz

In reading the play, what do you note about how the body is talked about in terms of movement, gender, age, or race (i.e., Greek versus ‘Asian’) and from which perspective?
For the quiz, you will only have to talk about one of these.

Understanding Dionysus

Dionysus’ aetiology, including the ‘ecstatic’ dance associated with him, are best known in the play Bakkhai by Euripides.
While it is a fictionalized play, it does reveal attitudes, understandings, and misunderstandings towards the nature of the god and his followers.
However, he has a very complicated origin when it comes to his worship in Ancient Greece.
He is known as the ‘god of many names’ because the evolution of the god has seen him take on different characteristics as a result of various origin stories and regionalized cult practices.
This is further complicated by the fact that Dionysus (and the other Greek Gods) were worshipped in Mycenaean Greece, which the Ancient Greeks viewed as their ancestors, but had different characteristics.
For example, the Mycenaeans were much more chthonic in their worship.

Origins of Dionysus

Mycenaean Dionysus - son of Zeus and ??? and is associated with death and rebirth, mystery cults associated with wine and wine cultivation, and is said to have been raised by nature, thereby linking him with his contemporary cults evoking and being in nature.
Dionysus Zagreus - son of Hades and Persephone and associated with the underworld, nighttime rituals, and sparagmos.
Orphic Dionysus - Orphic Dionysus is born of Zeus and Persephone and is more associated with birth and rebirth cycles, chthonicism, and madness.
Ancient Greek Dionysus - contemporary Dionysus is born of Zeus and Sémelê and is the god of wine, festivity, fertility, theatre, ecstasy, and enthusiasm.
Dionysus after Alexander the Great - god of fun and party whose worship moved from the marginalized class to the ruling class, resulting in a nationalization of his worship.

Dionysian Mystery Cults

Because it was a mystery cult, there are many aspects that are not known but we have been able to piece together many aspects, such as wine, sparagmos, music, and dance.
It was an attractive cult for the underrepresented, such as women and slaves as well as those in regions pressured by local powers, because Dionysus was known as the ‘liberator’ (Eleuthereus) and allowed those who felt the pressures of society could find themselves transformed.
How so?
The Dionysian Mysteries were not fully accepted by those in positions of power.
They contested its appropriateness, its ‘lack of structure’, and effects on ‘civility’.
However, repression of freedom did not work and instead the worship of Dionysus was ‘domesticated’.

Festivals of Dionysus

Understood from the Athenian point of view.
Rural Dionysia - took place in rural Attica during early winter and featured processional events, performances (often competitive), chori performing dithyrambs, and other festivities.
City Dionysia - took place at the end of winter and featured processional events leading to the Theatre of Dionysus, a parade of loot from successful battles, honouring of orphaned boys, animal sacrifice, and dramatic performances, which were judged and awarded prizes.
Anthesteria - took place in mid-winter and featured the subversion of social hierarchy, e.g., slaves were allowed to participate, chthonic rituals, and drinking contests.
Lenaia - took place in January and featured processional events, nighttime rituals, rites for women, emphasis on the care of the grape vine, music-making and dancing.
One thing we can ascertain when looking at the history of the Dionysia is that there were attempts to make it uniform, regulated, consistent, and ‘appropriate’.

Dionysus in Athens

One thing that we can understand is that Dionysus ‘came to be accepted’ based on how we understand his origins, records on the attitudes of his worship, and the eventual structuring and restructuring of festivities associated with him.
We also know that how the ‘rational, Athenian man’ viewed early Dionysian rituals was with a viewpoint that it was ‘irrational’, ‘excessive’, ‘foreign’, ‘inappropriate’, especially when women participated in them.
Why might this have been the case?
Why might certain Greek cities try to restrict the worship of Dionysus but then give in and instead attempt to control it?